CanadaNews’ Reporter Notes

In Naples, Florida, before cameras and a handful of supporters, Republican Fred Thompson gave up on his dream at becoming the next president of the United States; at least for now.

Thompson, the actor-politician, attracted a great deal of attention months before he announced his presidential run.  He had a string of poor finishes in the early primaries and caucuses. 

The demise of the former Tennessee Senator began on Sept. 4, 2007.  Fred Thompson sat on Jay Leno’s couch and declared that he was running for President.  Many people by that point were worried that he waited too long to make a decision – similar to what former General Wesley Clark did in 2004.  On that dreadful night Thompson told Leno and the viewing public, “I don’t think people are going to say, ‘That guy would make a very good president, but he just didn’t get in soon enough.’” Some people agree with Thompson.  They think it wasn’t the lateness of his entry - fully six months after most of his rivals - that killed his campaign. It was the candidate’s own perceived apathy.

This reporter disagrees.  I might be willing to say it was a little bit of both; but him decided to wait six months before he tore into the presidential rat-race, he deserved to lose.  Think about it, Thompson finished third in the South Carolina republican primary. 

“Today, I have withdrawn my candidacy for president of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort,” the former Tennessee senator said in a brief statement. 

In an interview Tuesday, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee suggested he would have beaten McCain in South Carolina if Thompson had dropped out earlier.  But even Huckabee is facing the same financial woes that Thompson dealt with. 

In the beginning Thompson seemed like a shoe-in.  His Ronald Reagan-esque legacy; his  eight-year Senate record and his 86% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, made him very attractive with the GOP.  From Sept. 5 until today, when Thompson announced he was ending his candidacy, he was plagued with complaints that he didn’t seem to want the Presidency enough.

His withdrawal announcement was characteristically short and low in energy.  In an interview with TIME shortly before the Iowa caucus, Thompson spoke of his long odds in the state and reminisced about his first Senate race in 1994, noting how his last-minute zigzagging across Tennessee took him from underdog to winner. “It’s the way we campaigned in Tennessee, where we went from 20 points behind to 20 points ahead all in 20 days,” Thompson said, adding that he planned to deploy the same kind of “focus campaigning” in Iowa.

Besides a lack of energy, Thompson was plagued by tactical missteps out of the gate. He had to defend his stance on abortion after the Los Angeles Times reported that, during his time as a lobbyist, he’d done work for a pro-choice group. During a stop in Florida his seeming ignorance over a controversial proposal to allow oil and gas exploration in the Everglades earned him criticism. And while the rest of the GOP field ran on a platform of ‘I’ll keep you safe, I’ll cut your taxes and I’ll overturn Roe v. Wade‘ (rotate pledge depending on candidate), Thompson centered his first policy rollout in early October on the third rail of American politics, Social Security reform.

Despite initial impressions that Thompson could garner strong conservative support, it never materialized. He never won backing from more than one in five conservatives in any of the earliest primaries and caucuses, including the 19 percent who exit polls for The Associated Press and television networks showed supported him in South Carolina. His showings were similarly weak with white born-again and evangelical Christians.

His easygoing style and reputation for laziness translated into a light campaign schedule that raised questions about his desire to be president. A spate of inartful answers to campaign-trail questions — on everything from the Terri Schiavo case to Osama bin Laden — didn’t help matters.

With him out of the race the real questions is:  “Did the race get easier to pick a winner or harder for the republicans to show their differences?”